lou-kash

I'm not at the Stomp at the moment, but I've set up a preset template in Helix Native that should basically do what you need: 2-ch mono.hlx Using EQ and Gain blocks as placeholders, replace them with whatever blocks you need. Firmware/HX Edit v3 required. Note that if you go one jack in and one jack out per channel, each channel signal will remain mono. While the outputs accept TRS jacks, that's for having a balanced signal, not a stereo signal on each jack. So there's no use for using stereo blocks whatsoever, unless you need a block that's avalable as stereo only. If you want mono in & stereo out, you need to move the final mixer block to the stereo aux outputs in Stomp/HX Edit. Not sure how to simulate this in Helix Native.

No. According to my conversation with Line 6 support concerning a somewhat related hardware issue (fixed in the meantime), this is even supposed to be the expected behavior, as the setting is apparently only meant to affect the Edit view. I, for one, still consider it a bug though.

Yeah, I had to borrow a similar model to digitize a few 9.5 cm/s tapes we've recorded on a then-bandmate's Porta Two

Oh, nice! I still have Tascam Porta One that I bought used in 1990. It still works! I've digitized all my 4-track cassettes a few years ago. They're waiting to be remixed. Well, hopefully I'll have the time to do it when I'll retire in 11 years. :)

Alright, installed RX8 on Catalina, reinstalled Helix Native, same issue: Native AU doesn't load in RX8, Native VST does. The same with the TDR universal AU plugins. No problems loading Native AU – or TDR AU, for that matter – in Logic 10.6.1 and other hosts. That seems to confirm that it's a RX8 bug, so I'm off to Izotope support.

That's very likely, haha! No, he's in a town 40 km away, so we don't see each other that often, let alone in these times. In fact, I have now installed TeamViewer on his MacBook in case he'd need remote Mac support. While that means I could remotely install HX Edit, sadly I don't have a 40 km USB cable handy to plug it in. :P

Ouch! Got me a Stöckli Dörrex with a timer. Works like a charm, totally safe. For those tasks I've been using Brian Davies' ClickRepair and DeNoise/DeNoiseLF. Brilliant, albeit clunky to use with its awkward Java UI and workflow. Not sure what's their future will be, see https://clickrepair.net. I have yet to thoroughly test if RX8 Elements can match them. For what it's worth though, Amadeus Pro comes with similar tools, too. For certain specific tasks they are pretty good, too. Oh, I love this kind of "beancounter" work. :D ~~~ Anyway, back on topic: I'm looking forward to use Helix Native in RX8 to nicely chain a few "studio" tools like compressors and EQs within one plugin. If needed. Be it VST for now. Haven't used any VST plugins since at least a decade… cheers

I can't because as noted, I don't have any USB-C device, except the new Apple USB-C charger that came with our new iPad. And I didn't want to clutter my buddy's brand new MacBook with software he'll never use. (For the record, he plays sax. I have even installed GarageBand for him if he'd like to do some recordings, but he just said "meh"…)

Recent 1st-hand anecdote, featuring a HX Stomp cameo: I was setting up a buddy's brand new MacBook Air the other day. He wanted to attach an external Toshiba backup disk he just bought, but he couldn't because the MacBook comes with just two USB-C ports. So we went to my local electronics discounter around the corner to buy a female-USB-A-to-male-USB-C adapter. They had just one "no name" model to choose from, 20 cm, claiming to be USB 3.0 compatible with data throughput "5 Gbps". The disk comes with the standard "USB Micro-B Super Speed" port and a corresponding cable with the regular USB-A 3.0 plug. So in theory, all should work all right, right? Wrong. We've tried a dozen of USB cables that I have in my archives, a dozen of similar USB 3 hard drives I have, nada. I've plugged a few USB sticks directly into the adapter, nada. Looking for more USB devices around our living room to test, I spotted my HX Stomp on the floor. Since it's supposed to work out of the box, class compliant, it's a good test object. So I plugged it into the adapter – and voilà! – it immediately popped up in the MacBook's Audio MIDI Setup app! So the USB adapter wasn't totally DOA after all. Eventually I recalled that the Micro-B-SS port on the Toshiba drive is compatible with the older Micro-B 2.0 plug, so I dug out one from my big USB cable archive box, and there was the drive after all. So this adapter apparently understands only USB 2, in spite of its misleading specs. For what it's worth, last week I went back to the shop to have the adapter replaced. A few days ago my buddy came back with his new MacBook (I don't have any Mac with USB-C), but the replacement adapter turned out to be the same turd as the first one. To be continued tomorrow when the shop opens…

Having been in art school 1983–1988, that also used to be my daily bread for many years to come… … but that's exactly where I found myself in 1989 as well! The university library in Berne, Switzerland, used to have a few IBMs and three SE30 and a LaserWriter in the reading room, and you could register as a user even as a non-student. The first time I came there I was asked if I already have some computer experience. I said no, and so I was advised to try the Mac first. So I found my way around the Mac by trial and error. Eventually someone installed PageMaker 3 on one of those, and I was hooked. I was self-employed since 1988, working as a freelance designer and musician, completely broke all the time. Apart from the library where I was printing my layout text sheets on the LaserWriter, I was choosing my "bestest buddies" by the Macs they owned, haha. Done many of my design jobs in exchange for fixing the issues people were having with their Macs, as I was always pretty good at troubleshooting. Eventually in 1999 I got a used LC475 from one of my buddies in exchange for one of my old turntables. Still got the LC, and it still works, as long as its PRAM battery is good … Ah, those were the days… That looks interesting, but not necessarily what I'm looking for. I use spectral editing mainly for restoration of analog transfers. Having done various mastering and remastering jobs in the recent years with historical recordings from the 50s/60s/70s/80s, some of them recorded live on abysmal 1/4" reel tapes @ 9.5 ips buried for decades in somene's filthy basement. Not all restoration like dropouts could be done that easily in Sountrack Pro, so I had to ask a buddy with an Audition license to let me use his Mac. That's where I learned what all can be done. Back then I would have even bought the standalone Audition CS if they were still selling and not "renting" it. So there goes Adobe, losing a sale. :P And RX8 Elements can now do almost everything in spectral editing that I've learned from using Audition while the rest can be done in Amadeus Pro or – yuck – Audacity. So I'm set for some time to come. If I get enough jobs (hint, hint) later this year, I still may upgrade to the Standard edition. :) What RX8 Elements cannot do is SRC. But Apple's afconvert can. Automator workflow as a MacOS Service plugin, and there you have one of the best SRC that there is for free, on par with Izotope.

Of course. The point is that I want to know why things don't work as they should. Been there done that: Launching the app in a different user account launches it as a demo. Same issue. To do: install RX8 & Helix Native on Sierra/High Sierra/Mojave/Catalina partitions and check there, too. There is a reason why it's cheaper –current massive discount notwithstanding – but this is not it. (For the record: regular prices are $129 for Elements, $299 for Standard. The sale is likely to end today.) I guess so, too, but I just wanted to report it here, just in case. RX8 also fails to load several TDR AU plugins that were recently updated for Apple Silicon. That's 100% reproducible on my machine e.g. when installing TDR Nova AU v2.1.4: it won't appear in RX8 at all. Downgrade Nova to v2.1.3, rescan plugins, and there it is again. That will be my next step. Audition is fine in theory and in practice, but I'm not going to tie myself into Adobe's "creative cloud" rip-off, ever. I'm a graphic designer by profession, and one of the reasons my "mission critical" partition runs El Capitan is the pre-cloud Adobe CS5 suite of design app: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, you name it. I'm slowly but steadily migrating my workflow to the Affinity Publisher/Designer/Photo suite, to get rid of all Adobe altogether. But yeah, that's my personal choice. Neither had I, but a week ago I asked on the Amadeus Pro forum (a fine audio editor on its own) if they have any plans to add destructive spetrogram editing. Amadeus already has an excellent spectrogram renderer – either from a file or directly from an audio stream – which is part of my audio workflow since over a decade. A fellow user then recommended to have a look at RX8. At first I thought that the spectrogram editor is only in the Standard edition which is over my budget, but I downloaded the demo nonetheless. You can choose which version you want to demo, and so I was surprised that even the Elements can do that, albeit with a few minor limitations. So for just $29, it was a no-brainer, as it's going to replace the "antique" and ultimately obsolete Soundtrack Pro spectrogram editor that I got with the Logic Studio 9 suite. So as far as RX8 Elements goes, I'm in it primarily for spectrogram editing and everything else is just the icing on the cake. But hat doesn't mean that bugs and issues shouldn't be documented, does it? ;)

I just checked with GarageBand 10.2: Helix Native 3.01 loads as expected. No Change View dropdown, and never was. That's Logic exclusive. I'd go through the usual troubleshooting: clear all system caches incl. AU cache (use e.g. Onyx) & reboot log in as a different user and try GarageBand with Native from that account, i.e. with vanilla preferences if it doesn't help, reinstall Native if it doesn't help, reinstall GarageBand, too

Recently I bought the Izotope RX 8 Elements audio editor. I noticed that Helix Native doesn't show up in its AU plugins list. All usual troubleshooting like clearing all caches incl. AU cache and rebooting done, to no avail. At the same time, the VST version of Native 3.01 runs in RX8 just fine. Also, the Native AU loads fine in Logic Pro X, Amadeus Pro 2, DSP-Quattro 5. Heck, even in Apple's Au Lab 2.3 from 2012… Helix Native 3.01 MacOS 10.11.6 El Capitan (I could also test it from Sierra up to Catalina, but haven't yet) MacBookPro9,1

I've seen the message on a preset that had saved tempi for each snapshots which are now lost, probably because I didn't reload my global snapshot/tempo settings from the backup. No big deal for me though. Other presets work fine.

Well, no offense intended, but you've been warned, you've made your choice, and now you're facing the consequences. That said, you still can have "best of both worlds", but you need to prepare yourself in advance. In short, if you need to run both the "cutting edge" Bug Sur and <insert your favorite MacOS version here>, you can create bootable partitions and switch as needed. That's exactly what I'm doing – albeit without Bug Sur due to lack of a compatible Mac. But just a few minutes ago, I have received the e-mail notification about your post on El Capitan – my trusty "mission critical" MacOS of choice. But because I was just in the process of wanting to test something with Logic Pro 10.6.1 on Catalina, I'm currently typing this after my MacBook has just rebooted in Catalina. It's really that simple.™ (Disclaimer: Strictly technically speaking it's not really that simple to switch between OSes smoothly, as it may also require lots of unix symlink voodoo and magic to sync all the preferences and files. But it's possible and manageable.)

It could be a faulty switch by some means. On my new Stomp, the touch capacitor on FS1 wasn't working. After checking with Line 6 support, they figured that FS1 should be replaced on warranty. Which is what was done and now everything works as expected.

Um… well, I guess that was exactly the reason why Line6Tony has posted a sticky link on orange background at the top of every page in these forums, titled MacOS 11 Compatibility with Line 6 Software, with this content:

If you want sample rate other than 48 kHz (and I would definitely want 44.1), you need the Helix Driver: https://line6.com/software For El Capitan you need driver v1.0.7, otherwise v1.0.9 And while you're at it, get HX Edit v3. And if you haven't updated the Stomp firmware to v3.01, do so from HX Edit as well.

That's something to be requested at https://line6.ideascale.com I was just looking for it but haven't found anything like that, so you may want to submit a request. (Speaking of which: Is it just me or does the Ideascale search and filtering – let alone search results sorting, if any – suck?) At the moment only if you patch MIDI Out to MIDI In with a cable, then you can save it per preset, CC# 68

Never upgrade a stable system that actually works. Install a new and largely unexplored OS like the Bug Su… er, I mean BIG Sur – on an external drive or on a fast USB stick first, and experiment with it until you are sure that everything works the way you want. For what it's worth, it took me 6 years until I was ready to upgrade from Mountain Lion to El Capitan last year, completely skipping Mavericks and Yosemite anyway, because I have finally found a driver hack for using my trusty old and fully functional M-Audio Firewire 410 from 2003 on El Capitan. (That hack should also work on Sierra, but there it's not "plug & play" anymore due to even harsher kext restrictions: you'd need to run shell scripts to load it each time you want to plug it in.) And while I was at it, I have upgraded my MacBook Pro with a 2TB SSD drive, splitting it into 6 bootable partitions with Mountain Lion, El Capitan (the "mission critical" one), Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave & Catalina. Like this, I can test and run whatever I need, simply by rebooting the Mac from the desired partition. Add some unix symlink magic to it, and I can continue doing things I started to work on El Capitan right after rebooting on Catalina. As long as the apps and devices are compatible with Catalina, that is. (Typing this while on the Catalina partition at the moment…)

I demand a recount! Or three! ;)

Also an important factor to consider: The mic model on the Cab block. From my lengthy experiments thus far, I'm usually starting with 87 Cond, because if the modeling is to be trusted, then that's the kind of mic with the flattest response, meaning "what you hear is what was there". When I'm somewhat satisfied with my sound using 87 Cond – along with Distance, Low Cut and High Cut parameters – then I'd eventually check out other specific mic models to alter the sound even more. For what it's worth, for guitar I'm usually using quite aggressive Low/High Cut, often like 150 Hz / 5 kHz, sometimes also assigning these parameters to snapshots depending on Drive/Master parameters of the respective amp. I haven't bought any yet, I don't see any reason whatsoever why I should. The Cab block choices do anything I need, be it for bass or for guitar. And if not, there's enough EQ models to the rescue. However, I have downloaded a free collection of acoustic guitar IRs from somewhere, don't remember where. Those alone don't sound very good with my Les Paul (with a 6-way switch modified for parallel scheme), but with the addition of the Acoustic Sim block, they turned out to be useful after all, helping to shape the "acoustic" sound even more.

Yeah! Although, for this very group I'd rather use those two spare blocks for refining the aforementioned "special effects": There's a multi-pitch shifter and a tape delay on a parallel path, recreating kinda synth effect which the band was using on the corresponding studio recording. With the new poly stuff I might get better results now. If the DSP can bear it, that is. I may need to rebuild the patch with less DSP hungry effects and amp; Del Sol 300 to the rescue! That said, I haven't used this preset for quite a while now, since we had to stop rehearsing – let alone performing live – many weeks ago, for obvious social distancing and "risk group" reason. Right now I'm getting a "Helix device failed to recall snapshot data properly" warning in HX Edit when changing snapshots, very likely due to the firmware upgrade. I suspect it's the originally saved tempi per snapshot which appear to be reset now. [offtopic] As for the real bass amp, I have an H&K Quantum QC415 which sounds alright, especially since I've added the Tech 21 Q-Strip box for precise equalizing. It's more the 15" speaker that I don't like much, and no Cab modeling can fix that. But two years ago I needed a loud combo very quickly, and this one was available very cheap right in my home town, so that's what I'm stuck with for the time being. And it's so LIGHT thanks to its neodym speaker so that I can carry it all by myself, my hernia scar notwithstanding. ;) I also have a small SWR Workingman 12 combo, but that's not loud (and thus clean) enough for a rock lineup. Anyway… [/offtopic]

A week or two after buying the HX Stomp, in August I was already playing it on an open-air stage, 35°C in the shade. I'm playing bass guitar in that band. My Stomp's line-out went straight to the PA, using Amp+Cab modelling with a few "special effects" blocks in front of it, plus a Send block before the A+C to my bass combo via Send output for the sole purpose of stage monitoring. So, HX Stomp can stand the heat just fine. Whereas our guitarist's Bogner tube amp head died gracelessly overheated within the very first song. He had to play the rest of the gig on acoustic guitar. It's pop, and every now and then we also play "unplugged", so it wasn't that much of a big deal for the overall sound, but still.

You have to assign the parameter to Snapshots first. HX Edit Pilot's Guide.pdf page 24.